“I don’t think many consumers weigh the iPad vs. the Surface 2,” Bret Kenwell writes for TheStreet. “Why? Well, mostly because Apple has created an ecosystem that many of its customers stay loyal to. Most don’t own an iPhone and a Surface. Or a Mac and a Surface. Most probably don’t own a Samsung Galaxy and an iPad either.”
“Going out on a limb, I’m going to assume most people who are buying the Surface are not users of the iPhone and other Apple devices. They are more than likely using Android-based smartphones,” Kenwell writes. “So I think Microsoft should refocus its marketing efforts against Google, Samsung, and Amazon. Instead of making head-to-head commercials against Apple, why not show a similar comparison to all the other tablets?”
“A quarterback looking to be drafted into the National Football League or vying for a roster spot from free agency doesn’t need to claim he’s better than the Denver Broncos’ Peyton Manning or the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady. No, he just needs to prove that he’s better than most of his competition — that he can still win against the vast majority of other players and still compete as a serious contender,” Kenwell writes. “Instead of launching these vendetta-like ad campaigns trying to make the iPad look dull and foolish — which, we all know is not true — Microsoft should be attacking the rest of the competition.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Beleaguered Microsoft is so flummoxed that they still haven’t even figured out who their competition is.
Hint: Your goal, just like all the rest of the also-rans, is to amass the biggest pile of Apple’s table scraps, dummies.
Apple’s iPad: a league on its own
The rest of the tech world figured this out years ago. When they tried to go head-to-head with Apple’s iPad, they failed miserably and lost money EVERY time in the eventual fire sale. So, what we see today are more products that go where Apple will not go. Ultra cheap tablets, “phablets,” convertible tables with keyboards, etc.
But Microsoft is stubborn and arrogant, and they’re making the same mistakes they made with Zune versus iPod, but on a MUCH larger (and more costly) scale.
Microsoft’s problem is that they imagine that their Surface really is the best tablet and the only valid comparison should be with what they consider to be the next best product.
That delusional mindset is making it impossible for them to market their Surface in an effective manner and until they work out who their customers really are, they won’t be able to sell to them.
Exactly, they think because they dominate the enterprise, that the Touch is the logical choice to integrate with their infrastructure.
Maybe if they had released it around the same time as the iPad, they’d have had a chance. The fact that the iPad was already in the corporate domain for several years, made Touch inessential. Users realized the iPad could do all they needed for the tasks at hand.
Users also realized they could get by without MS Office. The fact that you now get iWork for free which can import and export to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, also doesn’t help Microsoft. As usual, Microsoft was too late to the party. It was also stupid of them to not release a version of Office for iOS. Talk about hubris!
Microsoft spends half its time trying to figure out how a new product will maintain or increase Win-MS Office sales.
Apple, on the other hand under SJ, said “We are going into touch devices no holds barred.”
Apple also did NOT worry about eating into existing product sales. Now these new touch products earn more than their prior products put together.
Microsoft will never do this as long as Gates and Ballmer have a vote on the Board of Directors. Every product must support Windows & Office somehow by their thinking.
Doesn’t matter.
At Microsoft you advance by sacrificing teammates. And by getting an ever-larger share of budgets. So you throw under the bus those who, by their skill and intelligence, could throw you under the bus. Then you use your new positional power to get more budget dollars. And if you are in marketing, that means throwing good people out and then marketing the hell out of what product is left over created by the same sort of corporate-infighting wizards in R&D.
The result? Big-budget crappy marketing for big-budget engineering flops.
And Mac-vs-PC commercials like “one dollar to R&D, 10 dollars to marketing.”
Gotta love the frothing at the mouth comments on that article. Some people love to hate Apple.
What does this article have anything to do with Apple Inc.? All Apple competitors are trying to target Apple customers. What’s relevant is what Apple does, not what Microsoft does. Should this site be renamed MicrosoftDailyNews?
It would seem Google is Microsoft’s biggest enemy, not Apple. Google just leapt over Microsoft, so Microsoft should at least try to get back into second place and not go after a company that’s long gone and basically targeting high-end customers. Google and Microsoft are basically going after the same type of customers. Consumers short on cash who don’t really care about the quality of the products they’re buying. Microsoft needs to first regain that spot they just lost to Google and then go after Apple when they’ve built up sufficient steam.
Surface 1 has been a proven $900 million loss, and the surface 2 flop will take Microsoft to over a $billion loss, so why is Microsoft taking a piss by targeting apple with misleading advertisements? Microsoft is a laughing stock, but then again what would you expect from a company that was run by monkey boy ballmer 👹👹
Wow! A pundit who gets it! And from TheStreet, too…
for the Msft investor the really scary thing is that perhaps this shows that management does NOT REALLY UNDERSTAND THAT THE SURFACE IS INFERIOR.
i.e they are shaking their heads confused and the next management team will keep carrying on as they have been “we’ve got a good product, were on the right path, ‘ll we need to do is spend more on marketing…. “
Most Surface owners likely won’t own a Mac or an iPhone. They’ll likely own a rock attached to a stick by a strap of caribou hide, and maybe a couple fur pelts and a teeth-necklace.
I thought MS already dropped those ads. The part I liked was they made fun of Siri when they did not have voice reconnection on the surface. The one thing no one talks about is that the Surface, or any other Win tablet, does not have cell or GPS capability. The iPad does what laptops could not do, that’s the point. For people who work out in the field this is a new world. If you work at a desk the Surface is a joke. They need a large screen and a keyboard that stays closed. That is my favorite part, their stupid cover can stay closed.